


Wichelen

by tentacledicks



Series: Nachtwald [3]
Category: Watch Dogs (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Monster Hunters, Disabled Character, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Multi, Panic Attacks, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 03:41:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20500274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tentacledicks/pseuds/tentacledicks
Summary: Wrench let him go, clutched an ice cold hand over his eye instead, and fought to breathe. It was all in his head, even when it wasn’t, because he didn’t have any sort of proof that this was real. He never did. Witches had visions, had dreams, and his dreams always felt so fucking real, sometimes he couldn’t tell the line between truth and lies, the trap of his mind against the weight of the world around him.Which one was right?





	Wichelen

**Author's Note:**

> Someday, I will learn that "I probably won't be around for a bit" is the magic phrase that makes me wake up and work relentlessly on a fic all day before posting it. Someday.
> 
> Also, [a reference for some of Wrench's tats](https://tentacledix.tumblr.com/post/187457475013/did-you-know-that-trying-to-turn-a-motherfucker). Don't ask me what the runs around his wrists say, because it's something like "akhsdfkajhsk" usually.

It was dark. Moonless night. Stars covered by thin clouds.

The space on the other side of Marcus was cool and empty, because Josh always worked on full moons and new moons. They were magically significant. That was how magic _ worked _ for him, patterns and rules, strict timing on everything, perfect proportions in every alchemical wonder he saw fit to create. Numbers were the language of god, Josh said, and far as Wrench could tell, he believed it.

He let Josh have that. Belief in something greater was important along the border of the Nachtwald, because otherwise all they had to think about was every fucking thing living in there and waiting to eat them.

That wasn’t the thing that kept him up, heart pounding and ribs tight around his barely-filled lungs. The horrors of the forest paled in comparison to the horrors he’d already lived, and if he could just get that though his thick, stupid skull— 

The witchbrand over his eye flared with searing pain, echoed in the throbbing of his hip. Wrench bit down on a scream with the habit of long practice, pressing the scar more firmly into the warm curve of Marcus’s chest. _ Marcus _ was fast asleep, his own brand quiet—which meant it wasn’t a real threat Wrench was feeling, it was something in his head. It was always something in his head. Even when it wasn’t _ just _ in his head, it managed to sink its claws into his mind anyways, twisting everything until he couldn’t tell when the warning was real or just another trick.

Some days, he was pretty sure all of this was a trick. It seemed like the sort of daydream he’d come up with.

Underneath him, Marcus grunted and rolled, the empty space Josh _ should _ have been in too tempting for his sleeping brain. Wrench let him go, clutched an ice cold hand over his eye instead, and fought to breathe. It was all in his head, even when it wasn’t, because he didn’t have any sort of proof that this was real. He _ never _ did. Witches had visions, had _ dreams_, and his dreams always felt so fucking real, sometimes he couldn’t tell the line between truth and lies, the trap of his mind against the weight of the world around him.

Which one was right?

Was it this? Marcus’s back curved around the divot where Josh wasn’t, his dark skin pocked with small scars and laying warm over his solid muscles. Josh, somewhere in his greenhouse or his workshop, doing incredible things with glass and liquid, expression serene in the perfect focus of an environment he had control over. This little cottage, a mile out from a human village where they wouldn’t have to worry about being caught, Sitara’s room near the entrance so any invaders would have to get through the scary shit before they could even _ dream _ of touching the Order fugitives hiding further in.

Or was it _ this_? The sickening slide of a joint out of place, the pop of his hip as the ropes around his ankles finally pulled too far, a piece of him that would never fit right ever again because _ that _ gear had been ratcheted just a little bit tighter than the rest of the rack. The smell of burning meat, burning skin, burning hair, permanently embedded in him because they wouldn’t ever clean the cell, only mucked out the straw and replaced it with new but never so often that it would matter. An endless, permanent, trapped existence in a little stone room deep in the Order’s hall, where every one of his mother’s spells was used against him, their pet fucking goetists using _ his _ blood and _ his _ tattoos and _ his _magic for all their fucked up plans, patting themselves on the back because it didn’t count as unholy works if the vessel was unclean to begin with.

Was it the dream, or was it the nightmare? He couldn’t fucking tell anymore. The darkness made everything unreal, and new moons were a night of divination no matter which way he sliced it. He just needed to figure out if he was seeing the future or the past, possibilities or memories, because he couldn’t plan if he didn’t have all the information in front of him.

He couldn’t breathe, either way. The rack made it impossible, strained muscles tight until his lungs couldn’t expand, burned its way through his joints until all of them swelled hot to the touch. Couldn’t breathe, and his eye wouldn’t stop welling up with tears, the ruined blind useless thing that it was. Both of them. Both of them were useless things like that.

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

In the end, dream or not, he did _ not _ want to fucking throw up in the bed. That drove him up and out, limping heavily as he reached the door outside, his herb garden the perfect place to hide. A little bile wouldn’t kill the compost, and that was the only thing coming up. No blood this time, which was good. Meant that the memory turned night terror was just that—a dream. Not a prophecy. A magically charged dream, but just a dream.

The witchbrand kept burning, bright and sharp like the day he’d gotten it, but none of his tattoos were lighting up in response. Probably a memory too. Or some kind of spellwork too subtle for his family’s crude reckoning; he’d learned a _ lot _ about magic more subtle than his own since leaving home. Some of it he’d adapted into his own skin, making himself the living version of the old spellbook his grandmother kept carefully locked away.

Funny, thinking about that. Wrench grinned mirthlessly as he heaved up more bloodless bile, thinking of his grandmother skinning him like a rabbit to add it in. The old bitch would do it, too. Boys were expendable like that.

There wasn’t much else that could come up from an empty stomach. The chilly autumn air was sharp enough to slice through the tightness in his chest though, so he let himself fall in a heap near the chamomile and clover, half the herb garden growing wild while the rest was more carefully pruned. Josh had his greenhouse, but Wrench needed to feel the restless energy of the earth turning underneath him. When he rolled, he crushed just enough of the greenery underneath him to perfume the air, fresh and damp with moonless dew.

Scent was good. Scent was grounding. He always forgot that, mired deep in a memory; he could never smell his dreams. The cell had never been anything other than a miasma of unwashed bodies and dried blood, misery and fear so written into the stones that any magically sensitive person would weep just from proximity. He didn’t have the imagination to think of green growing things while deep in that pit.

He shut his eyes, the good one and the useless one, and breathed. His heart was still pounding too hard, a sickening thud like a war drum in his chest, and his hands and feet were frozen in harmony with a memory of ropes around his wrists and ankles, but breathing was starting to get easier. Just had to let the green in and remember it, that he was safe, that there was a hunter and a theurgist and a demigoddess standing between him and another Order cell.

When he flung an arm over his face, the runes glowed on the backs of his eyelids, red like a banked hearth fire. Homey. Josh was blue, and if he stretched his mind out, he could see the greenhouse and workshop glittering with theurgic spells, the clear cyan of a summer day mingling with the deep indigo of still lake waters. Protection, inside and out. Josh was pure, like a high quality sapphire, a gemstone focus that took in everything around him and distilled it to its most perfect essence.

Wrench opened his eyes and heaved himself up, crushing more plants under his palms. That was fine—clover was meant to be walked on. It meant he could carry the green with him, the sweet scent following him around the back of the house to the glass door entrance. Most of the windows were fogged, the chill of the night making water bead up on the inside, but the door was clear, wardings etched directly into the glass. He pressed his face against it, let the clean magic ease the sting of the witchbrand, then tugged on the handle.

Exotic plants from all over the world grew, potted and pruned with care. Sitara and Josh handled these the way Wrench handled the outdoor gardens, their order and precision a balance to his chaos and impulse. That kind of balance was good for the world, good for their house, because it meant that the energy flowed easily from one side of the scale to the other. Order—Josh, theurgy, glass and math, the sharp blue of the sky and the chill of ice and snow on a perfect winter day. Chaos—Wrench, goetia, ink and bone, the rich red of blood and the heat of a bonfire during Midsummer. And between them, like a fulcrum, Marcus—green like growing things, gold like pure sunlight, silver like the full moon on a clear night, every color in between and so perfect because of it.

But Marcus was asleep, and he wasn’t meant for magic anyways. So they’d do without the fulcrum for one night.

“Hey,” Wrench said, trying to keep his tone light as he ghosted up behind Josh. Whatever he’d been distilling outside the cruel light of the moon, it was finished; his jars and bottles were sealed and labeled, the glassware either soaking in a water bath next to the desk or being carefully reddened by fire under Josh’s critical eye.

“I thought you were going to bed early tonight,” Josh said, no indication in his voice whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. Since he wasn’t looking up from his steady process of disinfecting his beakers, Wrench decided it was a good thing.

“Yeah, well. The dark moon has me all itchy inside. You know how it is.” In here, surrounded by the cool tones and taste of Josh’s magic, that itchiness was further away. The cruelty of his family and the filthy touch of the Order couldn’t reach him here.

Josh looked up, and then set the heated glass to the side and stood. The thick leather gloves he wore when working with glass were peeled off in an instant, and Wrench couldn’t figure out why until Josh’s hesitant fingers touched his bare cheek.

Oh. Right.

Wrench leaned into the touch anyways, the petal-soft skin of Josh’s hands so unlike Marcus’s calluses or his own crooked, broken fingers. They were good hands. Firm when they had to be, gentle when that was better. Josh handled fragile things with precision, because he couldn’t stand to break them, and that meant Wrench too.

“It’s okay if you touch me,” Josh said, his palm flattening over Wrench’s face. It was good. This was good.

“Yeah. Yeah, alright, message heard loud and clear.” His eyes slid shut, body swaying forward into the space between them, and Josh’s warm arms curled around his waist. He smelled like the clean burn of purified oil, superheated glass, something bright and cold on the back of Wrench’s tongue the way only Josh’s magic could be.

He loved them. He really did. Loved them so much that it hurt sometimes, worse than the vice around his ribs, worse than the pillywinks on his thumbs, worse than his mother’s knife on his tongue, worse than the brand that was a permanent reminder of what the Order wanted to make him. Marcus, his reminder that people could be righteous, and Josh, his reminder that magic wasn’t foul by nature.

Josh’s face pressed into his shoulder, his broad hands splaying on Wrench’s back, and he sighed. Their bodies fit together like two puzzle pieces. Perfect.

“Are you done cleaning up in here?” Wrench asked, making no move to separate them. The soft, thoughtful noise he got in return was neither affirmative nor negatory, and Josh didn’t make any motion to break away either.

“...The rest of the glassware can wait until morning,” he said eventually. “I already stored everything that needed it, and the athames need to burn another two nights in full moonlight before I can quench them in the dark. Do you want to go back inside?”

Inside, where it was pitch black, without the soft glow of Josh’s spells to light his way. The only thing he’d be able to see would be his own tattoos, red and sullen when his eyes were shut, black and inert with them open. With the memories riding him hard enough that sweat was still cooling on his skin, Wrench wasn’t sure if he wanted that.

“Can we sit in the garden instead?” His tone was wheedling, playful, but still slightly too edgy to pass as at ease. Shit.

“The garden’s cold,” Josh said disapprovingly, but that wasn’t the same as a refusal. And he let Wrench start tugging him towards the door, separating until his skin wasn’t pressed into Josh’s working robes, only their hands twined together. It was enough, to feel Josh’s skin on his. Enough to duck out of the greenhouse and find one of the lavender bushes against the side of the house, stretch his legs out over the grass and have Josh settle in beside him, an arm firmly around his waist and a hand in his hair.

Josh’s fingers were clever, deft, and constantly fascinated by the texture of the shaved hair on the back of Wrench’s head. With a sigh, Wrench let himself slide sideways, his face thumping into Josh’s lap. The silk of Josh’s work robe was smooth and heavily woven, perfect for stopping any exploding concoction from penetrating the tight threads, and it was just cool enough to soothe the ache of the witchbrand. His eyes shut. His breathing evened out.

Bit by bit, the vice eased until he could feel his fingertips again. The world didn’t feel like it was ending anymore, and the filthy cell that lurked deep in the back of his head was locked again. This was real. He knew it was real, because the drag of Josh’s blunt nails over his scalp was inimitable, like the fragrance of lavender, like the crush of green growing things underneath them both.

Wrench grounded himself, planted his roots deep, buried himself in the realness of it until the dull embers of his tattoos were homely again instead of accusatory.

The crunch of bare feet on the garden path reached his ears, but it was the steady, light gait that Marcus had, so Wrench ignored it. A soft murmur of greeting from Josh confirmed his assessment, and then a second later a warm body draped itself over his side.

“It is way too fucking cold for you to be naked out here,” Marcus said, his voice rich with fondness and amusement, only the barest hint of worry peeking through.

“I said that too,” Josh muttered, but the rhythm of his fingers never stopped.

“You are both weak, like little babies,” Wrench mumbled into the slowly warming silk, relishing the contrast of cold air and his men curled around him. Real, like the garden, like freedom.

“Uh-huh. I’ll remember that, next time you start whining about your delicate constitution making it impossible for you to do laundry.” A huff of hot air brushed over Wrench’s shoulder, and then Marcus’s hand was curving over his hip, the bad one, warm enough to ease a little of the dull throb Wrench hadn’t noticed until now.

“Wrench does laundry?”

“Not _ willingly_.”

Involuntarily, helplessly, Wrench’s lips stretched into a smile. Neither of them could see it, not with his face hidden in Josh’s lap, but it was there nonetheless. No blame, no yelling, no punishment for diverging from the set path he was supposed to walk. Just the three of them, curled up in Wrench’s garden, letting him recenter himself with all the things he loved.

Not a dream. Real.

When they both finally chivied him upright and hustled him back inside, Wrench let them. Just like he let them pile him into the middle for once, Marcus’s warm muscle against his back and Josh’s cool skin against his face. They fussed him into place, settled into talking low and quiet about what Josh had been decanting that night, and Wrench let all of it wash over him with soothing familiarity.

They reminded him that there was good in the world, _ real _ goodness, not the fake, artificial thing that the Order liked to proclaim. If he had his way, that kind of good would stay in the world too; Marcus and Horatio kept ears to the ground for any hint that the Order had found them, and Sitara regarded possible threats with the arrogant disdain that only she could manage. So he’d leave that to them, and let the fear of it melt away.

And he’d make sure his relatives stayed far away from his family, whatever it took.


End file.
